James Covey

James Covey (1825-12 October 1850) was an British sailor who served as an interpreter during the Amistad proceedings of 1839-1841.

Biography
Kaweli was born in 1825 in the southwestern highlands of what is now Sierra Leone in West Africa, and he was enslaved at the age of five and sold to a European slaver three years later. He was illegally shipped to Cuba, but the ship was intercepted by the British Royal Navy, and Covey and the other captives were freed. He was put into the care of the Church Missionary Society in Freetown, Sierra Leone, and he joined the Royal Navy in 1838. He arrived in New York City in June 1839, and American linguist Josiah Willard Gibbs Sr., who was searching for a possible interpreter for the Amistad case, paced the harbors in New Haven and New York and recited the Mende numbers from one to ten. Covey understood him, and he was recruited by Gibbs and Lewis Tappan to serve as an interpreter for the African captives. He was instrumental in winning the case due to his use as a translator and communicator, and he returned to Africa in November 1845. He died in 1850.